The Shaytan Bride

by The Shaytan Bride (retail) (epub)

  A whole life I never had floated before me like a passing balloon and I, reaching for its string. After I left Dhaka as a young child, I never once thought about coming back and making it a permanent home, as if it was where I belonged. Here I was now, recalling all that was once familiar and that never had the chance to mean something more to me.

  When I returned to Boro Mama’s home that night, lying under the spinning blades of the fan, I realized my thoughts often spun the same way: Could I marry this man? Was it good for me? Would this person bring back the parts of myself I had forgotten in Canada? Or help me discover perhaps who I was further? Was what Boro Mama demanded actually really good for me?

  In the dark, with my eyes half-closed, I told myself, Okay, Sumaiya, let’s be rational about this. Let’s lay out the pros and cons. I considered all of my options. If I said yes to Shoaib then this house arrest would be lifted, everyone would be pleased, I wouldn’t be considered a terrible person, and I’d eventually be able to go back to Canada, possibly. Although I wouldn’t know when. I would probably have had a few children by then.

  Did I trust Shoaib? He seemed a gentle soul. Although, in passing moments, I asked myself if I had just been projecting onto him what I needed, which was a safe harbour. Or was he really as wonderful as he seemed? I trusted that he was. I would give him the benefit of the doubt. Sweety Khala reminded me that the case could just be one of Bollywood’s Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, a film where Aishwarya Rai’s character marries a man grudgingly after being forbidden to marry the one she truly wants. At first, she ignores her new husband and feels in her heart only anger, sadness, and longing for the past. Over time, however, her new husband wins her over with his kind spirit.

  “See, stories like that are more realistic,” Sweety Khala said.

  Wasn’t it possible that a relationship could blossom in deep and intimate ways with someone after marriage? After all, all love affairs that began with chemistry eventually fizzled out, anyway, if not tended to, or became more friendly and compassionate over time. This is what Abbu had told me, and also what I had suspected from my very limited experience.

  I would have to be willing to let Bhav go, but I didn’t know if I could truly get over him. It was possible I could be haunted by our memories, especially if I ended up quite unhappy with Shoaib. It was truly a gamble.

  After this I considered what would happen if I said no. It was highly possible that I would end up in a village, or even just continuing to spend my days in this storage closet, but for how long? I did not know. If I stop existing outwardly, will I stop existing inwardly? My being would probably disintegrate. If I was left in a village, never to see a city again, my fate could be like the woman who sat staring at the walls all day. What would happen to my dreams? My ambitions? The ice-skating rink, libraries, open-air pedestrian malls, plazas, and boutique shops, navigating complicated transit networks while holding an overpriced coffee in one hand, museums, themed restaurants, television? Clean water. Toilets. My friends.

  And then there was the option I had been considering for the past couple of weeks: find a way to give Boro Mama’s address to Bhav, so he could come or inform the government authorities. This option also had its consequences. The people I loved most I would probably never see again, and without them I wasn’t sure I could be who I was in my entirety.

  But then again, if I said yes, would I really want my family in my life? Would my resentment grow and prevent that? Would it even matter to them? I would be married, and they would go on about their lives and not care if I hated them.

  And there was the question of human rights, ethics, right and wrong. Safety. In any case, force was not acceptable. I wondered, What would Allah think of this? I did care more about what Allah would say than log kya kahenge, shomaj ki bolbe (what the people/ society would say).

  And there I was, back in my circular pattern, because that’s all I could do, be in my head. I wasn’t sure if I could truly feel my body, anymore; wasn’t sure that it could guide me intuitively. Each option led to the same sensation: numbness.

  I drifted off to sleep, then woke up a couple of hours later in a sweat. The room was pitch-black. The large window next to me, open. I looked outside at the blemished moon, wondering if Bhav had looked at it the day before. I thought for a minute that it still wasn’t too late to climb out and escape, but I knew I certainly wouldn’t get too far. I looked down at my hands and brought them to my face. The bones were protruding. The hair on my scalp was also longer.

  I got off the bed and stumbled over into the smaller storage closet. I sat on the cold floor and took a deep breath.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, to no one in particular, to no one.

  I thought Bhav should know that I was coming to accept him as irreconcilably lost from me, and myself as someone else, someone new — whatever it was, there was a difference.

  I put my hands on my stomach and curled my body inward, trying to comfort my own being.

  I coddled my body with the following thoughts: The intimacy shared when someone paints your henna. The warmth of a bathtub. Taking a nap after a long day. Bubbles. Flowers. The colour red. The sound of the waves of Lake Superior. The feeling of the easygoing five o’clock sunshine on your skin. Walking through a forest when it’s quiet and no one is around. Snow.

  And then Bhav. I brought my fingers to my face and dropped my head into them. I wept.

  “Are you okay?” A soft-spoken voice.

  I tilted my face up. It was Bilkis, standing at the door in small, holey pink shorts and a worn white shirt. A pink polka-dot bow on the side of her head. The bottom and sides of her feet seemed crusty and dry. My feet were in the same condition. She cautiously moved nearer to me and then actually sat next to me. We both had our knees up to our chest, breathing in the dust resting on the edges of the closed trunks and luggage.

  “Don’t cry,” Bilkis said.

  She leaned her body into mine and I loosened my arms from around my knees. I leaned into her, also. The warmth of her calming my volatile nerves. We held each other.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” she said. “You’re hurting a lot. I see that you’re so sad.”

  For the first time on the trip I felt seen. “I, I just want to go home,” I stuttered.

  Bilkis nodded. She said, “Inshallah. Whatever Allah wills. But I’m sure Allah sees your pain and knows your heart.” Bilkis took the edge of her blotted shirt and brought it to wipe the tears on my face. “I see it, too, it’s pure. You’re a good person. You don’t deserve this.”

  From that night on, Bilkis came to my room at night. She did what others didn’t: she listened. When there wasn’t anyone to recognize me, she pointed to my face. “I know you,” she said. We spoke with each other.

  One day Ammu, Nani, and Boro Mama stampeded into the bedroom while I was getting some clothing from the almari. I almost dropped the file of folded maxis I had in my hand.

  “Give it to us,” Boro Mama ordered.

  I gulped, concerned that they were talking about my journal. “What?”

  “Don’t act boca,” Nani warned. “You know what we are talking about.”

  Suddenly, I felt as if I was at the end of a tunnel, only picking up very faint sounds. Where did I want to be? Up in the moon somewhere, stargazing.

  Boro Mama grabbed my wrist and I shifted away, squirming.

  “Your ring,” Nani said, chewing her paan.

  “Why?” I asked, trying hard to be neutral. The ring was the only thing I had, other than my journal, that reminded me of Bhav and of my past self. If it was taken, I could slowly fade away.

  My feigned nonchalance did not deter them.

  Nani opened her palm and said, “Put it here.”

  I could tell that if I didn’t, Boro Mama would take it by force.

  “What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

  “Give it to the Huzoor,” Ammu finally answered.

  “But why?” I still wasn’t sure what the exorc
ist had to do with my ring.

  “To get rid of jinns, sihr, whatever is making you so stubborn,” Nani taunted.

  I realized then that they were all quite scared.

  “No,” I shouted firmly. “Not this. You’ve already taken everything else.”

  “Give it to us,” Nani demanded with equal force.

  Boro Mama let go of my wrist, “Oh, she will give it to us, and if she doesn’t —”

  I looked him in the eye this time. I did not blink. I would not lose this last bit of myself that I had left.

  Boro Mama swiftly grabbed my wrist again, and this time snatched my ring from my wedding finger, all within seconds. When I realized it was gone, I had to almost grab his arm to centre myself. Everything was spinning.

  Then they left.

  ∞

  The very next morning when I woke up, there was a circle of people around me: Gollapi Khala, Sweety Khala, Mami, Nani, Ammu. They were leaning in as if to investigate my body and face.

  “Get up. Why are you sleeping so much? Get up,” Sweety Khala ordered. I pulled myself up, still lightheaded. Bilkis strolled in with a glass of water in her hands. Behind her, on the other side of the door in the living room, was a man with a full white beard. He had on a matching white taqiyah hat and thobe. I saw him give something to Boro Mama and then he left.

  I wondered who he was and why it was that I was suddenly surrounded.

  I would learn later that my ring had been given to this exorcist for cleansing and keeping. It was thought to hold the curse that kept me from complying. The man had also brought another ta’wiz for me, because I had misplaced mine, and a scroll of some sort with some printed surahs.

  At this point, it didn’t even matter to me anymore who he was and what he had done or would do. The imprint of my missing ring on my finger reminded me that now, in this battle, it would be that much harder to say no.

  It was the birthday of Prophet Mohammed (May Peace Be Upon Him); it was Mawlid. The claret cloth sofa was moved out of Boro Mama’s living room. The maids laid out large white cotton sheets on the Persian rug. On the sheets sat a handful of guests, including local maulana. They were wearing white cotton kurta pyjamas and matching hats. Their heads were swaying in unison while their fingers counted tasbih beads. Sandalwood smoke spread as they recited the Quran. Women in the kitchen scooped biriyani into Styrofoam containers for the poor. Boro Mama got me from the storage closet, asked me to get washed up and sit next to him. He said it was important for me to be there. So I sat there by him, inhaling incense, losing myself to the melodic sounds. Mending, mending, mending, in a rhythmic motion.

  That night I slept in peace until the morning when I felt pins and needles in my arms and legs.

  My first instinct was to look for my journal so I could capture what I was feeling. I went to the storage closet and tossed the bags over each other, knocking down stacks of folded clothing. I couldn’t find it. The door hinge squeaked.

  “What is this nonsense?” Boro Mama asked. He had my journal in his hands and was standing at the door entrance.

  I froze.

  “I thought you were coming to your senses, but this, this is … absurdity.”

  It was as if I was standing there naked.

  He fumed out of the closet, but I didn’t follow him. I imagined he would put the journal in the case where he kept my passport, the one I had been informed about. The case he kept locked in his bedroom almari. That would be the last I’d see of my journal and shards of the previous me captured in its pages.

  Later, when Boro Mama noticed my lethargic posture, lying there waiting for the moments to be gone, he said in the tone of a commanding officer, “There’s no time for distractions or sentimentality. I have bumped up your wedding date. It will be on October thirty-first.”

  Halloween seems fitting, I thought. Halloween is the time for masks, presenting one thing but being something else underneath.

  Boro Mama had violated my privacy by accessing, dissecting, misconstruing, and then sharing with others what I had written. The sacred act of writing, both during this dark time and in general in my life, was an extension and expression of my spiritual self, especially when I couldn’t find myself at all in murky, muddy tenebrosity, pain, rage, sin. Where imagination and reality became one to present to us different possibilities. By snatching my means to access my truth, he had acted as God, leaving me spiritually hijacked and almost psychologically annihilated. I didn’t know then that in the future, I’d continue writing and face similar exploitation again — raw words that connected to my flesh would be stolen, packaged, and shared between hands without my consent, as if I was being trafficked. To me, the offence would always be considered grave, especially in a world that doesn’t always accept people for being who they are, that kills people for being who they are, so writing and art are survival. Self-expression being the highest form of actualization, the means through which we retain our humanity. As Boro Mama stood before me, I remembered that the pain was not only mine; it was also a collective one, experienced by women and other minority communities throughout history who have been burned at the stake, raped, and buried alive for simply expressing themselves.

  That was all the confirmation I needed that this man would never change his mind, nor would he soften. Such grave actions could only be taken by hearts that were a little hardened. All my efforts had been frivolous. I imagined that if he had known about Bhav before the plane landed here in Dhaka, he would have perhaps still planned my wedding in a similar way, without me having known anything. And then I would have asked myself, What kind of titillating exaggerations has he concocted in his melodramatic fantasies of my life in a country he’s never visited? In my relationship with a man that he’s never met? I could so perfectly picture him, telephone between his ear and his shoulder, picking at his nails, casually telling Ammu, not explaining, in that vile, gentle tone he could summon to pad his authoritarian objectives so that unreasonable requests suddenly became the only logical thing to do. Of course, Ammu weakened to him. He was the reason the family was alive, why they had survived the war, how they had thrived despite everything. He was her brother.

  Like the Darvaza crater, the fire in me rose, and this time I felt it almost engulfing my flesh — smouldering rage. Not like the one a few weeks earlier when I had screamed, then shouted at the top of my lungs, leave me alone! and physically pushed everyone away with whatever strength I had, or almost stopped eating altogether so my hunger could wake me up, or barricaded the storage room closet with suitcases upon suitcases, remaining behind them for days so I didn’t have to show the world what I had become. It was a rage that even went beyond my close attempt to jump off the rooftop in Dhanmondi. The growing fire would destroy everything in its way.

  I had eyed the phone in Boro Mama’s bedroom for days. In the earlier months I did not even think to try using it. It’s too out in the open, I thought. His bedroom was next to the kitchen, where Mami usually was during the day with the maids. The maids often dropped by, both expectedly and spontaneously. I knew they would be there once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once during the evening, to ensure the room was clean. Bucket of water, a ghamcha in their hands, soap bubbles, the hems of their saris lifted high and tucked in to their petticoats while they squatted on the floor and scrubbed. Although Boro Mama would usually leave very early in the morning, almost right after sunrise, he would sometimes return without much advance notice in the middle of the morning and then again predictably for afternoon siesta. I observed also that Shahzad, Shayan, and Saad sometimes would retrieve toys or books they had left in there. If guests were expected or the man selling saris from his basket dropped by, Mami could visit the room to change or clothes or get her wallet.

  There were too many possibilities. Furthermore, I had no idea if the phone could call long distance. It was also a rotary phone, which I had never used before.

  I tried once or twice to feign getting a glass of water from the kitchen
. On my way, I would make a quick turn and swoop into Boro Mama’s room. The first time I did that, Mami was in the bathroom, the bucket inside filling up with warm water she had brought herself from the kitchen. I had reached for the phone, and while I did, heard her squeal from the bathroom. The water must have been too warm or maybe she had met the perspicacious lizard. The sound was enough, however, to have me running out the door.

  The second time I tried, I got as far as dialing Bhav’s number. Yes, I discovered long-distance calls were possible. Before the phone could ring twice, I heard Boro Mama entering through the front doors. “Bilkis!” he called out, and it was almost as if he was standing next to me. I almost dropped the handset from my hands. I covered my mouth and tiptoed out, sliding into the veranda. As soon as I did, I saw him march right into the room. He had missed me by maybe half a minute.

  But I found a way. I called Bhav when Boro Mama was at work, Mami with the maids in the kitchen, and her three boys in the veranda in the middle of math lessons. Ammu was somewhere in Lalmatia, meeting with my other Khalas. I tiptoed into the room, my golden anklets jingling. I bit my lip and moved a wisp of hair from across my face to better see. I picked up the indigo orna falling from my chest and wrapped it around my neck. Boro Mama and Mami’s colossal almari had, on its surface, a mirror. I glanced at my reflection. I was like a bending willow. My two arms outstretched, loosely hanging mahogany locks that were now fading back to dark brown, my toes trespassing. There was a bed to my right, draped in a rich green sheet, custard blankets folded on top. An ash-wood desk with stacks of paper, files, and pens. I walked toward the marble night table in the corner. A lamp. Beside it, the beige rotary phone. I picked up the handset, brought it to my ear, looked around one more time, dialed Bhav’s number.